The present disclosure relates to toners and processes useful in providing toners suitable for electrostatographic apparatuses, including xerographic apparatuses such as digital, image-on-image, and similar apparatuses.
Numerous processes are within the purview of those skilled in the art for the preparation of toners. Emulsion aggregation (EA) is one such method. These toners are within the purview of those skilled in the art and toners may be formed by aggregating a colorant with a latex polymer formed by emulsion polymerization. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,853,943, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety, is directed to a semi-continuous emulsion polymerization process for preparing a latex by first forming a seed polymer. Other examples of emulsion/aggregation/coalescing processes for the preparation of toners are illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,403,693, 5,418,108, 5,364,729, and 5,346,797, the disclosures of each of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety. Other processes are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,527,658, 5,585,215, 5,650,255, 5,650,256 and 5,501,935, the disclosures of each of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.
Some high gloss EA toners use resins possessing a core-shell configuration, with a lower glass transition temperature (Tg) resin in the core and a higher Tg resin in the shell. Such toners may include waxes and may be produced with aggregating agents based on aluminum. Processes for producing such toners may utilize sequestering agents to remove aluminum ions and lower ionic cross-linking, thereby increasing the gloss. One issue with these toners is they may be prone to blocking issues and may have many wax protrusions on the surface.
Improved methods for producing toner, which decrease the production time and permit excellent control of the charging of toner particles, remain desirable.